Lisa Goldfarb’s research and teaching interests are in the fields of comparative literature (French and English) and critical writing. She focuses on 19th- and 20th-century European and American literature, and is particularly interested in modern poetry and poetics, the relationship between music and poetry, philosophic questions in literature, as well as the literature and history of New York City. Her interdisciplinary seminars on related themes include “Belief and Skepticism,” “Sound and Sense,” “Reading Poetry,” “Wallace Stevens and the 20th Century,” “Modern Poetry and the Actual World,” and “The Music of Poetry and the Poetry of Music.” Professor Goldfarb has taught a foreign study course in Nîmes, France and has accompanied student travel and study groups to Cuba, Prague, Athens, and Ireland. She is a recipient of Gallatin’s Adviser of Distinction Award and NYU’s Great Teacher Award. Her book, The Figure Concealed: Wallace Stevens, Music, and Valéryan Echoes (Sussex Academic Press, 2011), focuses on the resonance of Paul Valéry’s musical poetics in the poetry and prose of Wallace Stevens. In addition to her many journal articles on modern poetry, she is co-editor, with Bart Eeckhout, of a volume of essays, Wallace Stevens, New York, and Modernism (Routledge, 2012), which considers the impact of New York on the life and work of Wallace Stevens. Professor Goldfarb is president of the Wallace Stevens Society and associate editor of The Wallace Stevens Journal. She served as Associate Dean of Faculty and Academic Affairs from 2007 to 2014.

Teaching and Research Interests

19th- and 20th-century European and American poetry and fiction; music and literature; questions of belief in literature; expository writing

In the fall of 2017, Professor Goldfarb co-edited (with Glen MacLeod) Teaching Stevens, special issue of The Wallace Stevens Journal, Volume 41, Number 2. Professor Goldfarb also contributed the essay "Stevens's Poetics of Variation as a Guide for Teaching" to the issue.

Along with Juliette Utard and Bart Eeckhout, Professor Goldfarb co-edited Wallace Stevens in France: "Au pays de la metaphore" (Éditions Rue d'Ulm, Presses de l'École Normale Supérieure). She also contributed the chapter "Thinking through the Senses: Stevens and Valéry (with Echoes of Proust)" to the volume.

Professor Goldfarb published a chapter entitled, "Music" in the volume Wallace Stevens in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2017), edited by Glen MacLeod.

CONFERENCES AND TALKS

Professor Goldfarb will deliver "Sky, Sea, and Shore: Bishop, Valéry, and Symbolist Poetics" at a conference on Elizabeth Bishop, which will be held in Paris, France, from June 6-8.

Professor Goldfarb will deliver "'The Phases of this Difference': Jews, Rabbis, and Hebrew Texts in Wallace Stevens" at the conference on Wallace Stevens as World Literature in Stockholm, Sweden, which will be held from May 31 to June 2, 2018.

In January 2018, Professor Goldfarb chaired the roundtable "Wallace Stevens and Music," from the 2018 Modern Language Association Conference, which was held in New York, New York.

Professor Goldfarb co-organized the June 2017 Wallace Stevens Seminar, a conference that took place in the Liguria Study Center for the Arts and Humanities in Bogliasco, Italy.

Professor Goldfarb presented the paper "Music of the Sea: Elizabeth Bishop and Symbolist Poetics" for the Elizabeth Bishop Society panel on music, voice, and sound in Elizabeth Bishop's work held at the American Literature Association Conference in May 2017.

Professor Goldfarb spoke on "Wallace Stevens in Sound and Music," at the University of Connecticut, Waterbury, in November 2106.

Also in November 2016, Professor Goldfarb delivered "Three Voices of Modern Musical Poetry: Eliot, Stevens, Valéry" at the CUNY Graduate Center for the Twentieth Century Area Studies Group, English, and Comparative Literature.